Boston Dynamics has been making creepy animal-motion robots for a long time, and they are fun to watch, but have they ever actually commercialised any of these things? How does it survive if it doesn't?
Anyway, the latest - the robot dog like thing opening a door - is doing the rounds.
Tuesday, February 13, 2018
The questionable science of paleoanthropology
For whatever reason, I've never had much interest in which group of humans or proto-humans went where in pre-history. But it sure sounds like the people who work in the field can make some very big claims based on very dubious evidence:
When researchers made the astonishing suggestion last year that early humans settled the Americas 100,000 years earlier than thought, they asked doubters to keep an open mind and consider the evidence backing their claim. But their study1, which proposed that mastodon bones from California were broken by an as-yet-unidentified group of early humans 130,000 years ago, was instantly questioned by archaeologists. Most researchers agree that humans settled the Americas around 15,000 years ago.
Nearly a year later, the sceptics are still not convinced. In a rebuttal to the work, published on 7 February in Nature2, archaeologists say that modern construction equipment better explains the mastodon bone damage than does the handiwork of ancient hominins. They present an analysis of mammoth bones from Texas that, they say, have similar-looking damage, which was caused by natural wear and tear and heavy equipment.
In the original study, a team co-led by Tom Deméré, a palaeontologist at the San Diego Natural History Museum in California, examined bone fragments of a mastodon (Mammut americanum), an extinct relative of elephants, that had been found during roadworks in suburban San Diego in the 1990s. Deméré and archaeologist Steven Holen at the Center for American Paleolithic Research in Hot Springs, South Dakota, contended that the remains bore telltale fractures seen in bones struck by the stone tools of early humans. No obvious stone tools or human remains were found at the site.
Deméré’s team also established that the mastodon bones were around 130,000 years old, and suggested that an unknown hominin species had reached California by that time. Current scientific consensus on settlement of the Americas is that early humans from Asia crossed the Bering land bridge into Alaska around 20,000 years ago, a theory based on archaeological research and studies of modern and ancient DNA.
To rebut the mastodon claim, Ferraro’s team examined a site in Waco containing the remains of at least 26 mammoths that died about 60,000 years ago. Archaeologists have previously looked for evidence of humans at the site and found none. According to Ferraro, some of the mammoth bones were battered and broken in the same way as the bones from the San Diego site.
Ferraro thinks that construction work — some of the Waco mammoth bones were found during a building project — and natural wear can explain the similarities.
More Barnaby
A few comments on the walking dead red:
* I don't think he realises that the continual appeal to "private matters" that have hurt his family actually comes across as insincere and self serving attempt to try to shut down discussion. "Stop it, media, you're hurting my lovely wife and children, who have been hurt enough already." Yeah, by who? is the way most people probably react to that.
* Very hard to believe he would bring defamation action over the bum pinching allegation.
* So, how long before the mainstream media picks up on that odd looking independent media site that has published that he had an affair with a lobbyist in 2014. The article says they gave notice of the story to relevant parties, and seems to have received no threat of defamation action in response. Will the mainstream media take another 4 months, or 4 years, to report on that allegation?
Update: that "True Crime" website has taken down the story alleging the earlier affair (and other assorted alleged misconduct) for "tactical reasons" according to Twitter. So, I guess someone's lawyer finally got out the warning letter? Still, given other hints by even Miranda Devine that there are things Barnaby would not like us to know, I strongly suspect more is yet to appear in the mainstream media.
* I don't think he realises that the continual appeal to "private matters" that have hurt his family actually comes across as insincere and self serving attempt to try to shut down discussion. "Stop it, media, you're hurting my lovely wife and children, who have been hurt enough already." Yeah, by who? is the way most people probably react to that.
* Very hard to believe he would bring defamation action over the bum pinching allegation.
* So, how long before the mainstream media picks up on that odd looking independent media site that has published that he had an affair with a lobbyist in 2014. The article says they gave notice of the story to relevant parties, and seems to have received no threat of defamation action in response. Will the mainstream media take another 4 months, or 4 years, to report on that allegation?
Update: that "True Crime" website has taken down the story alleging the earlier affair (and other assorted alleged misconduct) for "tactical reasons" according to Twitter. So, I guess someone's lawyer finally got out the warning letter? Still, given other hints by even Miranda Devine that there are things Barnaby would not like us to know, I strongly suspect more is yet to appear in the mainstream media.
You think propaganda is bad now...
A pretty interesting article at Buzzfeed News about some tech dude who reckons that things might be bad regarding "fake news" propaganda now, but it's going to be a disaster once very sophisticated video and audio fakery starts being used widely.
Maybe the answer is to work on the psychology of people, to get them to learn to think for themselves about manipulation, rather than the (perhaps hopeless task) of tacking new technology. Yeah, big ask, I know.
Maybe the answer is to work on the psychology of people, to get them to learn to think for themselves about manipulation, rather than the (perhaps hopeless task) of tacking new technology. Yeah, big ask, I know.
Monday, February 12, 2018
Time to go, Barnaby
Surely it's only the wafer thin majority of the Turnbull government that it making them want to try to tough it out with Barnaby. (That and the threat that if Labor politicians keep making a fuss, the Coalition will make sure more Labor affairs are outed - what a sleazy tactic.)
The Coalition must know that even if they manage to squeeze past legalistic problems with what went on (his pregnant girlfriend not being his "partner", for example), it still just doesn't smell right.
Reports are saying that the affair did cause problems in his office with other staffers - stressed at keeping his whereabouts a secret from his wife. That and the jobs created for her, said by the Coalition to be something arranged within the National Party and therefore not needing specific approval by Turnbull, might save Turnbull's job but makes the Nationals look complicit. And why accept rent free accommodation from a businessman when you're on a $400,000 plus salary, and until recently, your new girlfriend was pulling in $190,000 as well?
Now, I see some guy on Twitter is saying he'll be publishing the story of a 2014 affair with a lobbyist. Miranda Devine already hinted on the weekend that there had been other affairs.
So it is looking very much like Barnaby, good old Catholic conservative Barnaby, has been sleazy for a long time, and when the chickens came home to roost via pregnancy, he made sure the media was stonewalled on all questions asked before and during the by-election campaign as to what was going on.
To top this all off - he's going to be Acting PM next week! What an embarrassing look for the nation.
He is making the whole government look duplicitous, hypocritical and unethical.
And the funny thing is I had warmed to Barnaby a bit over the last couple of years, despite his stupidity on climate change, and other things such as his pork barrelling orced relocation of an Authority to Armidale. Turns out there was no reason to like him, after all.
The Coalition must know that even if they manage to squeeze past legalistic problems with what went on (his pregnant girlfriend not being his "partner", for example), it still just doesn't smell right.
Reports are saying that the affair did cause problems in his office with other staffers - stressed at keeping his whereabouts a secret from his wife. That and the jobs created for her, said by the Coalition to be something arranged within the National Party and therefore not needing specific approval by Turnbull, might save Turnbull's job but makes the Nationals look complicit. And why accept rent free accommodation from a businessman when you're on a $400,000 plus salary, and until recently, your new girlfriend was pulling in $190,000 as well?
Now, I see some guy on Twitter is saying he'll be publishing the story of a 2014 affair with a lobbyist. Miranda Devine already hinted on the weekend that there had been other affairs.
So it is looking very much like Barnaby, good old Catholic conservative Barnaby, has been sleazy for a long time, and when the chickens came home to roost via pregnancy, he made sure the media was stonewalled on all questions asked before and during the by-election campaign as to what was going on.
To top this all off - he's going to be Acting PM next week! What an embarrassing look for the nation.
He is making the whole government look duplicitous, hypocritical and unethical.
And the funny thing is I had warmed to Barnaby a bit over the last couple of years, despite his stupidity on climate change, and other things such as his pork barrelling orced relocation of an Authority to Armidale. Turns out there was no reason to like him, after all.
Local UFOs
The Brisbane Times has an article about UFO research organisations in Queensland, inspired by this State Library blog post.
The articles note some interesting cases from the mid 1960's, which appear to have been reported by sincere country folk.
As for the only UFO group still around - UFO Research Queensland - it seems to have been the hobby of the Gottschall family for a very long time. I am pretty sure that was contact name for the group in the late 1970's, when I wrote them a letter asking if they had public meetings. (Letter writing to find out about a club - that's what people used to do pre-internet.) Forgive me if I have mentioned this story before, but to my surprise, in response, I unexpectedly had a visitor arrive at my parent's front door one evening asking for me. (I was still living at home.) He was a pretty young guy, perhaps university student age (as I would have been), and I seem to recall an afro-ish style haircut and a somewhat eccentric air about him. In fact, I think one of my parents said "there's some strange looking guy at the door for you." He told me he had come in response to my letter.
I was pretty taken aback that a mere letter enquiry resulted in a personal visit - he was no Man in Black, but it still had an invasion of privacy feel about it. I politely ended the visit quickly at the front door and don't think I ever bothered getting the details of where and when they meet. I never bothered following up anything about them again, but I think I later established that they used the old Adamski UFO on their insignia (you know, the one that in fact turned out to be a chicken coop lamp). I've never taken them seriously since then.
Update: interestingly, that last link is to a blog that I didn't realise existed run by long time UFO skeptic and debunker Robert Sheaffer*. I see that he had written a couple of posts (here's the first) about the recently released UFO videos taken from Navy Hornets, but the debunking of them seems to be more difficult than usual. He points out the claims from someone else that they are very similar to a video of a distant jet in a case from Chile. And he does make likely sounding claim that the glowing aura aspect of the videos is an artefact of the IR imaging.
But, the problem is the audio (and interviews with one of the pilots) just doesn't seem to fit the "mistaken identity of a distant jet" theory at all.
It might be that audio and video has been fiddled with, but really, I don't think Sheaffer's attempted debunking is presently anywhere near successful. In fact, he spends more time going on about the funding from the Pentagon to Bigelow, which is an odd story, and some of the claims made do not sound credible.
But the two videos - they remain pretty strange and unexplained.
* Update 2: I meant to mention - I am pretty sure that it was Robert Sheaffer who gave a talk that I attended in Adelaide in the late 1980's about his UFO debunking. In fact, I even spoke to him briefly afterwards, noting that I had found J Allen Hynek's books quite convincing, and I was surprised at some case or other in which, Shaeffer argued, Hynek had been completely conned. He said he had met Hynek, who was a nice guy, but just too gullible when it came to liars and fabulists.
The articles note some interesting cases from the mid 1960's, which appear to have been reported by sincere country folk.
As for the only UFO group still around - UFO Research Queensland - it seems to have been the hobby of the Gottschall family for a very long time. I am pretty sure that was contact name for the group in the late 1970's, when I wrote them a letter asking if they had public meetings. (Letter writing to find out about a club - that's what people used to do pre-internet.) Forgive me if I have mentioned this story before, but to my surprise, in response, I unexpectedly had a visitor arrive at my parent's front door one evening asking for me. (I was still living at home.) He was a pretty young guy, perhaps university student age (as I would have been), and I seem to recall an afro-ish style haircut and a somewhat eccentric air about him. In fact, I think one of my parents said "there's some strange looking guy at the door for you." He told me he had come in response to my letter.
I was pretty taken aback that a mere letter enquiry resulted in a personal visit - he was no Man in Black, but it still had an invasion of privacy feel about it. I politely ended the visit quickly at the front door and don't think I ever bothered getting the details of where and when they meet. I never bothered following up anything about them again, but I think I later established that they used the old Adamski UFO on their insignia (you know, the one that in fact turned out to be a chicken coop lamp). I've never taken them seriously since then.
Update: interestingly, that last link is to a blog that I didn't realise existed run by long time UFO skeptic and debunker Robert Sheaffer*. I see that he had written a couple of posts (here's the first) about the recently released UFO videos taken from Navy Hornets, but the debunking of them seems to be more difficult than usual. He points out the claims from someone else that they are very similar to a video of a distant jet in a case from Chile. And he does make likely sounding claim that the glowing aura aspect of the videos is an artefact of the IR imaging.
But, the problem is the audio (and interviews with one of the pilots) just doesn't seem to fit the "mistaken identity of a distant jet" theory at all.
It might be that audio and video has been fiddled with, but really, I don't think Sheaffer's attempted debunking is presently anywhere near successful. In fact, he spends more time going on about the funding from the Pentagon to Bigelow, which is an odd story, and some of the claims made do not sound credible.
But the two videos - they remain pretty strange and unexplained.
* Update 2: I meant to mention - I am pretty sure that it was Robert Sheaffer who gave a talk that I attended in Adelaide in the late 1980's about his UFO debunking. In fact, I even spoke to him briefly afterwards, noting that I had found J Allen Hynek's books quite convincing, and I was surprised at some case or other in which, Shaeffer argued, Hynek had been completely conned. He said he had met Hynek, who was a nice guy, but just too gullible when it came to liars and fabulists.
Only worth defending if white
Have a look at this Axios post noting Trump's history of giving "the benefit of the doubt" (or more) for guys accused of sexual impropriety/domestic violence, and how it ends.
It doesn't even mention his infamous advertisement re the Central Park five.
It doesn't even mention his infamous advertisement re the Central Park five.
Just another potential supereruption to worry about
I guess it's better than Mt Fuji erupting, at least for Tokyo, (I'm just guessing, really), but still:
Some 7,300 years ago, a supereruption devastated the southern islands of what is now Japan, burying most of the archipelago in thick ash. Known as the Akahoya eruption, the blast was so powerful it caused the volcano’s magma chamber to collapse, leaving a 12-mile wide scar called Kikai Caldera, which is mostly underwater.
Now in a study published Friday, scientists have discovered that a dome of lava lurks beneath the caldera. By studying its magma plumbing, volcanologists could gain insight into the entire caldera system, which could help them better predict when another eruption in the Japanese archipelago might occur.
“The most serious problem that we are worrying about is not an eruption of this lava dome, but the occurrence of the next supereruption,” said Yoshiyuki Tatsumi a volcanologist at Kobe University in Japan and lead author of the study that appeared in the journal Scientific Reports.
Dr. Tatsumi’s previous work has suggested that the chances of a supereruption happening in the Japanese archipelago in the next century are only about 1 percent. But if a volcano in this area erupts, it could eject nearly 10 cubic miles of magma, covering almost all of the country and its 120 million people in nearly eight inches of thick ash, he found.
Sunday, February 11, 2018
Byrne does Bowie
David Byrne recently did a cover of Bowie's Heroes with the Choir Choir Choir people. I think his distinctive voice does very well with the song, and I can actually understand more of the words, too.
If you like pop songs done by or with choirs, it's well worth looking at some of their other videos. I liked this one from a couple of years ago, with Colin Hays singing Overkill:
If you like pop songs done by or with choirs, it's well worth looking at some of their other videos. I liked this one from a couple of years ago, with Colin Hays singing Overkill:
Yet more unwanted movie reviews
* Rushmore: even though I have been underwhelmed by Wes Anderson's last couple of movies, I thought I would see what his shtick was like when it was new, back in 1998. The verdict: yeah, it was pretty amusing and likeable. The story's eccentric in a way that made me think parts of it were probably autobiographical, and I read afterwards that my hunch was right:
* The not fully viewed Tropic Thunder: Last night I tried getting past the first 20 minutes of this awful thing, and just couldn't. I cannot fathom the good reviews it largely received. First, it seems weird that a 2008 movie would be bothered mocking the overly dramatic Vietnam war movies such as Platoon which were big 20 years previously. Had the screenplay been rattling around unmade since 1990, because it felt awfully dated? Movie-within-movie satires are a delicate thing - if you push the ridicule too hard (such as this movie does, in spades), it just doesn't work in any way. (I'll allow it might work as a absurdist 3 minute piece in sketch comedy, but that's it.) A bunch of actors who have been funny in other movies (and Tom Cruise, who critics seemed to think was hilarious in this) cannot save it as far as I'm concerned. Gives me all the more reason to never trust vehicles Matthew McConaughey is in, and I'll add that when Ben Stiller makes and awful movie, they really, truly stink. I think his hit rate of good movies is actually pretty low.
* Vanilla Sky (2001, Tom Cruise version.) Giving up on Cruise's over the top act in Tropic Thunder, I switched over to see him in this. I' hadn't seen the Spanish original, which no doubt helps. (I seem to recall that quite a few art house type critics, such as David Stratton, resented this film as being an unnecessary remake.)
I thought it was pretty great - well directed, really good acting by all concerned, Penelope Cruz at what may have been her peak of youthful charm and beauty, and a story that finally made some relatively straight forward science fiction-y sense. (Although it is one of those films open to other interpretations.)
Two surprises which, if I had known, would have made me watch it earlier: a brief cameo by Steven Spielberg (yay), and the incredibly magnetic Tilda Swinton turns up at the end too. They are like the exact opposite of McConaughey - lucky charms indicating that a movie is probably well worth watching. (The negative power of McConaughey is something even Spielberg struggles to overcome - Amistad was an interesting story that nonetheless is one of Spielberg's least memorable movies.)
I had what seemed a lengthy dream last night in which I had inherited the Courier Mail, and kept trying to work out who to consult to learn how to run a newspaper. It was not an unpleasant dream, though, and clearly came to me a result of Vanilla Sky.
Recommended.
Rushmore Academy was where Wes Anderson went to school. Well, not exactly – it was called St John's School, and it was only after he scoured private schools as far as the UK that he realised his alma mater was the perfect setting for his semi-autobiographical movie about a precocious turd who forms extracurricular clubs and falls head over heels for a hot school teacher. In a very Anderson-y way, he banked his private school experience for Rushmore. Like Rushmore's main skeeze Max Fisher, Anderson, too, was academically underachieving and had a throbbing crush on an older woman.Certainly, no other movie before or since is likely to feature the word "handjob" quite so often. Recommended.
* The not fully viewed Tropic Thunder: Last night I tried getting past the first 20 minutes of this awful thing, and just couldn't. I cannot fathom the good reviews it largely received. First, it seems weird that a 2008 movie would be bothered mocking the overly dramatic Vietnam war movies such as Platoon which were big 20 years previously. Had the screenplay been rattling around unmade since 1990, because it felt awfully dated? Movie-within-movie satires are a delicate thing - if you push the ridicule too hard (such as this movie does, in spades), it just doesn't work in any way. (I'll allow it might work as a absurdist 3 minute piece in sketch comedy, but that's it.) A bunch of actors who have been funny in other movies (and Tom Cruise, who critics seemed to think was hilarious in this) cannot save it as far as I'm concerned. Gives me all the more reason to never trust vehicles Matthew McConaughey is in, and I'll add that when Ben Stiller makes and awful movie, they really, truly stink. I think his hit rate of good movies is actually pretty low.
* Vanilla Sky (2001, Tom Cruise version.) Giving up on Cruise's over the top act in Tropic Thunder, I switched over to see him in this. I' hadn't seen the Spanish original, which no doubt helps. (I seem to recall that quite a few art house type critics, such as David Stratton, resented this film as being an unnecessary remake.)
I thought it was pretty great - well directed, really good acting by all concerned, Penelope Cruz at what may have been her peak of youthful charm and beauty, and a story that finally made some relatively straight forward science fiction-y sense. (Although it is one of those films open to other interpretations.)
Two surprises which, if I had known, would have made me watch it earlier: a brief cameo by Steven Spielberg (yay), and the incredibly magnetic Tilda Swinton turns up at the end too. They are like the exact opposite of McConaughey - lucky charms indicating that a movie is probably well worth watching. (The negative power of McConaughey is something even Spielberg struggles to overcome - Amistad was an interesting story that nonetheless is one of Spielberg's least memorable movies.)
I had what seemed a lengthy dream last night in which I had inherited the Courier Mail, and kept trying to work out who to consult to learn how to run a newspaper. It was not an unpleasant dream, though, and clearly came to me a result of Vanilla Sky.
Recommended.
Saturday, February 10, 2018
The propaganda problem described clearly, but no solution identified
You really should read Ezra Klein's terrific column at Vox: Donald Trump, Fox News and the Logic of Alternative Facts.
It's a clear and convincing identification of how Right wing propaganda is working, with one key point being:
It's a clear and convincing identification of how Right wing propaganda is working, with one key point being:
What Conway and others understand is that if you’re just trying to activate your tribe, you don’t have to win the argument, you just need to have an argument; you need to give your side something to say, something to believe. Something like the Nunes memo or the various out-of-context texts aren’t part of a search for truth — they’re an ammo drop, or, to go back to the way Ball put it, “a semi-plausible (if not entirely coherent) counternarrative.”
Charlie Sykes, a conservative talk radio host turned Trump critic, put it well. “The essence of propaganda is not necessarily to convince you of a certain set of facts. It is to overwhelm your critical sensibilities. It’s to make you doubt the existence of a knowable truth. The conservative media is a giant fog machine designed to confuse and disorient people.”.....
And so, although fact checking can show how the "counternarrative" is not true, those who already chose to believe it cannot be bothered following the fact checking process:
If you want to believe that the Nunes memo, the FBI texts, or the Warner texts show an anti-Trump witch hunt on the part of the FBI, and if you’re following politicians and media organizations that want you to believe that, it’s easy enough to believe it. The argument has internal logic, it sounds plausible, it fits what you’re hearing, it aligns with whom you trust, and you’re seeing what looks like documentary evidence.Yes, there are plenty of outlets trying to fact-check these claims, plenty of outlets working hard to align their reporting with reality, plenty of outlets trying to explain what’s actually happening. Explaining why it’s not true takes some time, it takes dates, and it takes an interest in the explanation and some interest in the people delivering it. This work never reaches most of the people convinced by the original stories, and it likely wouldn’t be credible to them even if it did. As David Roberts wrote in his important essay on tribal epistemology:Information is evaluated based not on conformity to common standards of evidence or correspondence to a common understanding of the world, but on whether it supports the tribe’s values and goals and is vouchsafed by tribal leaders. “Good for our side” and “true” begin to blur into one.
Now, while there has been despair about how to counter this (people interested in getting governments to make sensible climate change policies have been debating how to deal with propaganda for a good decade), there are a couple of points I don't hear said enough:
* Political spin is one thing; outrageously misleading and inflammatory claims made with no regard for truth is something else. It's ethically wrong and in the case of Fox News as a money making machine, cynical to the point of evil. (Who really believes that the drama queen acts of Hannity and that ridiculous Jeanine Pirro are entirely sincere? If it is, they're so stupid they should be taken off the air anyway.)
My point is: as far as I can tell, the network continues to host at least 2, maybe 3?, token moderate journalists/hosts who don't go along with the lines put out by the overwhelmingly pro Trump propaganda machine that the network is.
They shouldn't stay there! No ethical person should participate in such a corrupt machine in the interests of thinking it needs them to give it a shred of credibility. Their co-workers (and presumably, the bosses) are cynical propagandists with no interest in truth and objectivity - and as Klein explains, no counter explanation given by them is going to be accepted by the 95% of viewers who are there for the propagandists anyway.
* There needs to be more calling out of such deliberate deception as evil, not by other journalists, but by everyone with any moral standing and a public voice. Stop pretending it's just politics and spin that's always been with us - it isn't. It is sophisticated and cynical manipulation of people who have given up caring if they are being manipulated. It is dangerous, and anathema to good decision making in a democratic system. Call it out.
Friday, February 09, 2018
The sound of heads pointlessly hitting brick walls, again
Sinclair Davidson sure knows how to run a stupid argument.
Today it's to suggest that the ABC must be failing its purpose (or not be good value for money) if people pay for cable television too.
Apparently, a really, really good national broadcaster can run enough programming that satisfies everyone at every minute of the day. I don't know: perhaps inflate their budget by 10, give them more bandwidth, and they could.*
It's an extraordinarily dumb line to run, even by his stagflated standards.
And then the minions get to bleat again about how much they hate the ABC, because bias, climate change, etc. Sad place, really.
* that was just a guess, but maybe not far off. I see that the Nine Network annual report from 2014 says they had total revenue that year of about $1.5 billion. The ABC in its entirety - TV, radio, internet and other assorted stuff - operates on just over a billion dollar budget.
Today it's to suggest that the ABC must be failing its purpose (or not be good value for money) if people pay for cable television too.
Apparently, a really, really good national broadcaster can run enough programming that satisfies everyone at every minute of the day. I don't know: perhaps inflate their budget by 10, give them more bandwidth, and they could.*
It's an extraordinarily dumb line to run, even by his stagflated standards.
And then the minions get to bleat again about how much they hate the ABC, because bias, climate change, etc. Sad place, really.
* that was just a guess, but maybe not far off. I see that the Nine Network annual report from 2014 says they had total revenue that year of about $1.5 billion. The ABC in its entirety - TV, radio, internet and other assorted stuff - operates on just over a billion dollar budget.
Every Clint Eastwood film in ten words
"...and then righteous testosterone did what had to be done."
[A post inspired by the rather bad reviews of his latest movie, for which I have to join in with every writer and say "not to detract from those guys did, which was really outstanding". But Eastwood's thematic interests really are limited to the above to a cliche extent, aren't they?]
[A post inspired by the rather bad reviews of his latest movie, for which I have to join in with every writer and say "not to detract from those guys did, which was really outstanding". But Eastwood's thematic interests really are limited to the above to a cliche extent, aren't they?]
Back to Barnaby
It was an interesting discussion on Radio National Breakfast this morning about the matter of the public's right to know about Barnaby Joyce's affair.
Fran Kelly indicated that lots of listeners were very angry that it had been not been reported on by most media during his re-election campaign.
Of the panel of journalists, one went with "well we did try to investigate it and couldn't confirm it", one went with "really, it was a personal matter that we don't like to touch" and one went with (I'll paraphrase) "this is absurd, of course the public has a right to know if a Deputy PM facing re-election in a by-election that could bring down the government has done something that would be controversial in any workplace - got a staffer pregnant. Journos just didn't want to upset the convenient compact they have with politicians."
I'm with option 3.
As for the "we did try to investigate it" - some have linked to how the Inverell Times asked questions of Joyce's media office specifically about the status of his marriage and why he was being asked in public places about his mistress. The paper was fobbed off. Nice to know someone made at least a token attempt - but come on, as Caroline Overington (option 3 above) argued, as if journalists really interested in this couldn't get to the bottom of a rumour that so widespread.
Also, the other female journo on today who said "we did try to investigate" claims that journalists had in some cases not just been fobbed off, but been lied to.
That should be news itself, if true, but is the story of lies to cover an affair also not being reported because of the mutually convenient pack between politicians and journos?
Of course politicians on both sides are running with the "it's a private matter" line - they have a great incentive in the keeping the compact of not reporting on infidelity no matter the circumstances - given it almost certainly happens to a higher extent in both their professions than it does in the general public.
I'm glad to see that I'm not the only person thinking this is a clear case where the general principle of avoiding unnecessary interest in personal lives has been taken way too far in this case.
Fran Kelly indicated that lots of listeners were very angry that it had been not been reported on by most media during his re-election campaign.
Of the panel of journalists, one went with "well we did try to investigate it and couldn't confirm it", one went with "really, it was a personal matter that we don't like to touch" and one went with (I'll paraphrase) "this is absurd, of course the public has a right to know if a Deputy PM facing re-election in a by-election that could bring down the government has done something that would be controversial in any workplace - got a staffer pregnant. Journos just didn't want to upset the convenient compact they have with politicians."
I'm with option 3.
As for the "we did try to investigate it" - some have linked to how the Inverell Times asked questions of Joyce's media office specifically about the status of his marriage and why he was being asked in public places about his mistress. The paper was fobbed off. Nice to know someone made at least a token attempt - but come on, as Caroline Overington (option 3 above) argued, as if journalists really interested in this couldn't get to the bottom of a rumour that so widespread.
Also, the other female journo on today who said "we did try to investigate" claims that journalists had in some cases not just been fobbed off, but been lied to.
That should be news itself, if true, but is the story of lies to cover an affair also not being reported because of the mutually convenient pack between politicians and journos?
Of course politicians on both sides are running with the "it's a private matter" line - they have a great incentive in the keeping the compact of not reporting on infidelity no matter the circumstances - given it almost certainly happens to a higher extent in both their professions than it does in the general public.
I'm glad to see that I'm not the only person thinking this is a clear case where the general principle of avoiding unnecessary interest in personal lives has been taken way too far in this case.
Just an opinion
I can't stand Senator Jim Molan - his whole manner grates, and he strikes me a prime example of how the Army office corps allows pompous, overly self assured twits to have a career.
Brave advertising
I'm sure many must be amused to see this advertisement appearing on Twitter recently:
So, some advertising exec, and the fund itself, thought it was clever to call it "Apollo" yet use the space shuttle as a graphic, despite it having nothing at all to do with the Apollo program, and being the only famous spaceship design to actually destroy itself not once, but twice.
I can't decide whether that is what can be called irony, or whether it's just honesty, given what the cryptos have been doing lately...
So, some advertising exec, and the fund itself, thought it was clever to call it "Apollo" yet use the space shuttle as a graphic, despite it having nothing at all to do with the Apollo program, and being the only famous spaceship design to actually destroy itself not once, but twice.
I can't decide whether that is what can be called irony, or whether it's just honesty, given what the cryptos have been doing lately...
Nice research from QUT
QUT researchers have identified a drug that could potentially help our brains reboot and reverse the damaging impacts of heavy alcohol consumption on regeneration of brain cells.Link is here.
Their studies in adult mice show that two weeks of daily treatment with the drug tandospirone reversed the effects of 15 weeks of binge-like alcohol consumption on neurogenesis – the ability of the brain to grow and replace neurons (brain cells). The findings have been published in Scientific Reports.
"This is a novel discovery that tandospirone can reverse the deficit in neurogenesis caused by alcohol," said study leader neuroscientist Professor Selena Bartlett from QUT's Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation.
- This is the first time tandospirone has be shown to reverse the deficit in brain neurogenesis induced by heavy alcohol consumption
- Tandospirone acts selectively on a serotonin receptor (5-HT1A)
- The researchers also showed in mice that the drug was effective in stopping anxiety-like behaviours associated with alcohol withdrawal, and this was accompanied by a significant decrease in binge-like alcohol intake
Liberated German kids
Well, while I knew that Japan raises kids to travel around the city alone and not be afraid, I didn't know that Germany had a view to child raising that emphasised independence too. (I suppose I shouldn't be surprised - it has been brought to my attention that the Japanese have similar attitudes to the Germans on many things.)
Slate notes that there's a book out by an American women noting the stark differences between the two countries' attitudes to child raising:
Update: There is an odd combination in Japan, and by the sounds of it, Germany, in relation to the matter of childhood social compliance combined with greater independence. Japanese social cohesion is emphasised from a young age, in terms of learning societal politeness, group effort and cohesion (for example, the way all school kids are engaged in cleaning the school each day), and even the acceptance of family/public nudity in onsen. (It's probably no co-incidence that countries that are relatively casual about social nudity - the Scandinavians, Germans, Japanese - tend towards strong welfare state/socialist tendencies. Well, perhaps describing the Japanese post war system like that is a stretch - but you certainly don't have a highly stratified income and lifestyle difference between the wealthy and middle class.)
But within that sort of society that expects strong social compliance and contribution in certain respects, they can allow greater independence in terms of how children grow up.
On the contrary, the US right wing tendency towards complete adult autonomy and freedom from government interference leads to a society with little social cohesion and a feeling that it is simply not safe to allow children to be independent on a day to day basis.
Slate notes that there's a book out by an American women noting the stark differences between the two countries' attitudes to child raising:
The attitudes really are very, very different:In a memorable scene of Sara Zaske’s guide to German-style parenting, Achtung Baby: An American Mom on the German Art of Raising Self-Reliant Children, Zaske sends her 4-year-old daughter Sophia to her Berlin preschool with a bathing suit in her bag. It turns out, however, that the suit is unnecessary: All the tykes at Sophia’s Kita frolic in the water-play area naked. Later that year, Sophia and the rest of her Kita class take part in a gleefully parent-free sleepover. A sleepover! At school! For a 4-year-old! These two snapshots of life as a modern German child—uninhibited nudity; jaw-dropping independence—neatly encapsulate precisely why Zaske’s book is in equal turns exhilarating and devastating to an American parent.Zaske argues that thanks in large part to the anti-authoritarian attitudes of the postwar generation (the so-called “68ers”), contemporary German parents give their children a great deal of freedom—to do dangerous stuff; to go places alone; to make their own mistakes, most of which involve nudity, fire, or both. This freedom makes those kids better, happier, and ultimately less prone to turn into miserable sociopaths. “The biggest lesson I learned in Germany,” she writes, “is that my children are not really mine. They belong first and foremost to themselves. I already knew this intellectually, but when I saw parents in Germany put this value into practice, I saw how differently I was acting.” Yes, Zaske notes, we here in the ostensible land of the free could learn a thing or zwei from our friends in Merkel-world. It’s breathtaking to rethink so many American parenting assumptions in light of another culture’s way of doing things. But it’s devastating to consider just how unlikely it is that we’ll ever adopt any of these delightful German habits on a societal level.
Although Zaske does end every chapter with well-meaning suggestions for how American parents and governments (ha) might deutsch-ify their approaches, the book’s many eye-popping (but fun-sounding) stories—solo foot commutes for second-graders; intentionally dangerous “adventure playgrounds”; school-sanctioned fire play; and my personal favorite, a children’s park that consists solely of an unattended marble slab and chisel—just remind me of all the reasons my American compatriots will double down on their own car-clown garbage lifestyles. I found myself frustrated into tears while reading Achtung Baby, because the adoption of any German customs stateside would require nothing less than a full armed revolution.For example, when Sophia starts first grade, school administrators remind parents that under no circumstances should they drop children off in an automobile. Could you imagine? I can’t. In the contemporary United States, even in larger cities (with New York being the only notable exception), school is so synonymous with the interminable “drop-off line” that its vicissitudes are the subject of bestselling mom-book rants.
I think that Australia is too closely aligned with the American views, especially in the vast over-reaction to child being in a public space alone.
Update: There is an odd combination in Japan, and by the sounds of it, Germany, in relation to the matter of childhood social compliance combined with greater independence. Japanese social cohesion is emphasised from a young age, in terms of learning societal politeness, group effort and cohesion (for example, the way all school kids are engaged in cleaning the school each day), and even the acceptance of family/public nudity in onsen. (It's probably no co-incidence that countries that are relatively casual about social nudity - the Scandinavians, Germans, Japanese - tend towards strong welfare state/socialist tendencies. Well, perhaps describing the Japanese post war system like that is a stretch - but you certainly don't have a highly stratified income and lifestyle difference between the wealthy and middle class.)
But within that sort of society that expects strong social compliance and contribution in certain respects, they can allow greater independence in terms of how children grow up.
On the contrary, the US right wing tendency towards complete adult autonomy and freedom from government interference leads to a society with little social cohesion and a feeling that it is simply not safe to allow children to be independent on a day to day basis.
Thursday, February 08, 2018
Qualms rapidly overcome
Gee, it was only a couple of years ago, when the HIV prophylactic drug Truvada was first becoming available, that there were articles talking about how some gay men were stigmatised by other gay men for using it. It was a controversial question - will it give licence to men to go back to behaviour of the kind that led to the HIV breakout in the first place - lots of non safe, casual sexual encounters with low regard for consequences.
How quickly the qualms seem to be vanishing, with news that the government is almost certainly going to subsidise its use.
I can understand that their might be an economic benefit to using it - if the cost of prevention is cheaper than the cost of treatment. I see from a post here in 2014 that it was estimated then that the cost of antiviral treatment was $18,000 per year per person. I wonder if it still runs at that cost. How did Africa get around that problem - I don't know the details of that story,
And I guess that guys (and the odd woman) using PReP may not be using it all of their life - if ever they decide that having sex with one, non infected person is the easiest way to not catch HIV.
But - it still grates that, unlike your average drug, it is not treating an illness, but is more like a super expensive version of a condom for people who refuse to use other, pretty simple strategies (like condoms or other forms of safe sex until reaching high confidence of mutual monogamy with a partner with no disease - how radical) for having a healthy sex life.
One thing I bet will be an outcome - a continuing rise in other STDs due to the non use of condoms.
How quickly the qualms seem to be vanishing, with news that the government is almost certainly going to subsidise its use.
I can understand that their might be an economic benefit to using it - if the cost of prevention is cheaper than the cost of treatment. I see from a post here in 2014 that it was estimated then that the cost of antiviral treatment was $18,000 per year per person. I wonder if it still runs at that cost. How did Africa get around that problem - I don't know the details of that story,
And I guess that guys (and the odd woman) using PReP may not be using it all of their life - if ever they decide that having sex with one, non infected person is the easiest way to not catch HIV.
But - it still grates that, unlike your average drug, it is not treating an illness, but is more like a super expensive version of a condom for people who refuse to use other, pretty simple strategies (like condoms or other forms of safe sex until reaching high confidence of mutual monogamy with a partner with no disease - how radical) for having a healthy sex life.
One thing I bet will be an outcome - a continuing rise in other STDs due to the non use of condoms.
When will Kates question this?
When will Australia's most Trump adoring economist (Kates) ever get around to questioning the fact that Trump and his Republicans indisputably do not care about the budget deficit (now that they are in power):
Back in 2012, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called the budget deficit “the nation’s most serious long-term problem.” That same year, House Speaker Paul Ryan called it a “serious threat” to the economy. They were full of it.Not just in the narrow sense that they both went on to enthusiastically endorse a $1.5 trillion tax cut late last year. Nor even in the somewhat broader sense that the real cost of that tax cut is much higher than $1.5 trillion when you consider the various accounting gimmicks and bad-faith phaseouts that were used to squeeze it under that figure.Even under the weird linguistic conventions of American conservative politics where deficits caused by tax cuts don’t count as real deficits, today’s budget deal — a big, multi-billion dollar increase in military spending “offset” by a nearly-as-large increase in non-military spending — gives up the game entirely. They don’t care, on any level, about the size of the federal budget deficit.
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